


Magic Mirrors Never Lie

by th_esaurus



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Clones, M/M, Narcissism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 11:57:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony flew back in from a fairly routine scuffle in Syria to find his clone playing Beethoven on the grand piano. He'd never taught him that. "That's just for show, you know," he said, tugging off his helmet. "I can't actually play it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magic Mirrors Never Lie

"It's all well and good having you around," Tony told Pepper, who had taken to forbidding him breakfast before he'd opened his mail. "But you're not me."  
  
"A fact I'm grateful for constantly," Pepper replied, holding his bran flakes just out of reach.  
  
"I'd much rather send you to do all the boring stuff while I'm off saving the world. Maybe I could give you a mask. You know, my face on a stick. D'you think it'd fool anyone?"  
  
"Oh, of course, Mr Stark. Our bone structures are practically identical."  
  
"You've got the sarcasm thing down, at least. I hope you picked that up off me."  
  
Tony felt he was onto something here. What if, hypothetically, he could get someone to fill in the gaps in all the boring moments of his life? To answer the questions he'd already done seventeen times, or churn out his signature on the endless forms, or sit in front of the board and tell them, yes sir, no sir, three bags fucking full sir. Tony could keep the saving-the-world part, plus the girls and glory. Frankly, it was a genius plan.  
  
He thought about hiring someone at first, a lookalike. But that would create paperwork and payslips and some guy's over-inflated ego. So he thought about an android. He had initially conceived of Jarvis as an android, but dismissed that in the planning stages out of practicality, and the same problems hit him here. What if it broke down in the middle of a press conference? What if someone touched it, and realised the rather alarming fact that Tony Stark was made of metal? And fine wine and dining were right out of the equation. Tony needed a more real solution, something entirely visceral.  
  
"Well, fuck me," Tony muttered, and grinned like a bookie whose horse has just come in.  
  


*

  
  
First thing he did was call Reed Richards and told him to spill everything he knew about cloning. Richards, to his annoyance, started babbling on about stem cells and medical funding and sheep, so Tony hung up on him. Banner was more useful, and gave Tony a list of books he had Jarvis download and summarise aloud.   
  
"Planning something ridiculous?" Jarvis asked him, when Tony had him take a full-body scan, butt naked, and to extract the DNA from a couple of blood samples.  
  
"Pretty much," Tony replied.  
  
Like most of his personal projects, Tony threw himself into this before he fully knew what he was doing. He had degrees in applied sciences and biomedicine – he'd picked these up in his early twenties, as an attempt to show his father he wasn't only good at wiring – and Stark Industries had a mostly empty lab he began stocking up, somewhere in the Nevada desert. He hired a small team of geniuses that were up to their necks in bribes and contracts in order to keep them quiet, briefed them, and set them to work almost immediately. Not one of them raised an argument when he told them what he was planning to do.  
  
Pepper, on the other hand, kicked up a storm.  
  
Tony had told her with his puppy face firmly affixed and that bounce in his voice he usually saved for the day the Playboy calendar came out, but she had none of it. In fact, Pepper looked close to tears. She was trying to keep it inside as much as she could, which Tony was grateful for – he knew, from experience, that she had a fierce backhand on her – but she ripped into him just the same.  
  
"This isn't just unethical, it's wrong!" she told him, her arms folded across her chest as if to restrain herself. "What happens to the mistakes, Tony? What happens when things don't go as planned? You're creating something  _human_ , you can't just pull the plug out when it doesn't do what you want."  
  
"I don't make mistakes, you know that," Tony replied breezily.  
  
"It took you four attempts to get the Jericho's guiding system right, and you nearly blew up half of Iceland in the process. Take this seriously."  
  
"I am. Pepper, trust me. It's going to be fine."  
  
"And what happens when you get bored of it?" Pepper insisted, her fingers bunched tight into her palms. "When you get older and it doesn't? When it's no longer  _useful_?"  
  
Tony turned his back to her, and poked at a dial on his keyboard. He hated when Pepper tried to be his voice of reason without him asking her. He hated it more when she was generally right. "I'll sort it," he said shortly. Pepper stared at his shoulders for a long time, and then left without another word. The next morning, when he tried to smooth it over with her, Pepper told him in no uncertain terms that she'd have nothing to do with this.  
  
"You try and bring me in on it, I'll resign."  
  
"That doesn't work as a threat when you've used it before."  
  
"Tony," Pepper said, and it was both a warning and the end of the conversation.  
  
Jarvis later told Tony she had a point, and Tony snapped back that Jarvis was essentially an overgrown calculator, not a moral treatise. Tony mostly worked on his own after that.  
  


*

  
  
Having realised that his nearest and dearest weren't as entirely on board with this as he was, Tony only introduced Rhodes to the project when it was almost done. In a determined attempt to avoid Pepper's told-you-so disappointment, the first test was going swimmingly. It was going to be the one. By the time it was ready for the reveal, it looked exactly like Tony; wet and naked and unconscious in a glorified test tube, but enough of a mirror image that it filled Tony with pride.  
  
Rhodes was less enthusiastic. "This is off the fucking scale," he murmured, rubbing his chin. "You know this is at least thirty shades of illegal?"  
  
"You gonna tell on me?"  
  
Rhodes looked like he was considering it, hard.   
  
He took Tony aside – "I can't look at that thing. It's like seeing you dead, and I already dealt with that once." – and told him that this wasn't right. That this wasn't like the suit: it was too dangerous, too selfish and too weird. "You want to pass your line on, fine. Settle down. Have kids. But nothing good's going to come of this, I guarantee it."  
  
"But the scientific advances alone—Hell, Rhodey, we can revolutionise the public sector with this. We can cure disease and grow organs and—"  
  
"So go do all that. But this," Rhodes gestured back into the room, like there was a ghost there. "This isn't how to start."  
  
Rhodes didn't rat on Tony, only told him not to fuck this one up and then kept his distance. Tony imagined he and Pepper were probably having intense meetings behind his back about getting him sectioned. He didn't need them, not for this. He was used enough to working alone – after all, he'd been doing it since he was nineteen.  
  
He'd saved the fucking world before now, the least they could do was give him a bit of leeway.   
  


*

  
  
Only after they birthed his clone did Tony stop referring to it as 'it'. It became 'he'.  
  


*

  
  
No, really, he hadn't thought this through, but he'd be damned if he was going to give up now. Tony had a few dozen partially wrecked bikes in his garage, but the three he'd actually stuck with purred like a whole pride when he revved them up. Somewhere in the planning stages, the idea of having a clone had stopped becoming a get-out card and started, in Tony's mind, being for the greater good.  
  
The clone could talk. That was a start. He had no discernable personality and understood little that wasn't an order. He picked up the habit of copying Tony fairly quickly, which both pleased and unnerved him, and had a few basic survival instincts: eat to live, sleep at night, drink, be willing to learn. All of this had been programmed in to his network through careful splicing and rebuilding, and less technical methods – flash cards, once his eyes had been opened inside the tank, and audio stimulation. Tony's job was to take the blank slate and shine it up enough to pass as a reflection.  
  
"You were supposed to save me time," Tony told him irritably.  
  
"Sorry," the clone replied. It sounded like a question.  
  
Tony taught him to copy his accent. He trained him to pick out an Armani suit in a line-up. He plied him with booze until the clone could hold his drink. He listed celebrities he should know of, ones he had met, ones he had fucked and ones he wanted to. He made Jarvis dictate vast tomes of law and business while the clone sat and listened, obediently. He told the story of his kidnap in Afghanistan until it could be quoted back at him, word for word, inflection for inflection.   
  
"Hey, Tony, what's round and pink and red all over?"  
  
"I couldn't tell you its name, Tony, but I sure as hell spanked it rotten last night."  
  
When he had been reassured enough of his own genius, Tony sent his clone out into the night with an earpiece down the back of his shirt and a spy camera strapped to his lapel. He let the kid loose in a bar for two hours, and watched with absolute glee as the clone downed his scotch like a pro, signed a couple of autographs and managed to pull two different buxom brunettes.   
  
"Not half bad," Tony told him, slapping his back genially. "You're getting there."  
  
"I am," the clone replied, but the words still sounded unsure.  
  


*

  
  
Tony flew back in from a fairly routine scuffle in Syria to find his clone playing Beethoven on the grand piano. He'd never taught him that. "That's just for show, you know," he said, tugging off his helmet. "I can't actually play it. Here—here, help me off with this."  
  


*

  
  
Four months of babysitting and Tony had had enough. The clone passed his first board meeting with flying colours and Tony decided it was time to let him get on with his duties. Tony sat him down and smiled warmly and told him how it was going to be. "I've had a couple of rooms built onto the workshop, those are yours now. Stick to 'em, right? I'll send you a schedule every week or so, just so you'll know where to be, with who, and why. Talk to me if you need help remember crap, there's an intercom in every room. Rules," Tony said, snapping his fingers to drive it home. "Don't go out if I'm out. I can't be in two places at once. Don't go anywhere with anyone. Don't cross Pepper or Rhodes – they'll know you're not me. They've got some freakish extrasensory perception or something. If someone starts talking to you and you don't know what the hell they're saying, change the subject. Got it?"  
  
"Yes," the clone said, nodding. And then he started to say something else, but stopped. In Tony's presence, he had developed a shyness and hesitancy that he couldn't seem to get over. He was confident as Tony himself, obviously, in any other company, but when they were together he seemed child-like and unsure. Tony never thought that needed seeing to.  
  
"S'up?"  
  
"You...won't be with me anymore?"  
  
"You don't need me now," Tony said, and thought it odd that the clone didn't look proud.  
  


*

  
  
While Jarvis got along with the clone well enough, he'd had a little hissy fit at Tony about being demoted to second fiddle. Gone were the evening conversations and fondly bitchy quips; Jarvis was all work and no play these days. So when Tony came down to the workshop and found the video playback running, he figured Jarvis was just doing it to be annoying.   
  
Except then he noticed that people were having sex on his monitor. And that one of them was him.  
  
It was dated last night, just before midnight. Tony sometimes drank himself to stupidity, but he  _knew_  when he scored, and last night was just not one of those times. The room looked like his, but the bedcovers were different, and the dim view from the window too different – it wasn't his room at all. Tony looked at the body onscreen, the lips and fingers and muscles that are his own and not his at all. He'd indulged in some personal home movies before, but seeing his clone like this was not like watching his own amateur porn – it felt too voyeuristic, and turned him on too much.   
  
He realised belatedly that his clone was being fucked by a man. Tony swore under his breath.  
  
"Turn it off, Jarvis," he said to the dark room, but the images kept on rolling, monotone and unflickering. Tony watched his clone lie back and take everything this stranger had to give, and ask for more, and come like it was the first orgasm he ever had. It probably was.  
  
"Jarvis," Tony said again, quieter this time, and the screen faded instantly to black.   
  


*

  
  
The clone neglected to show his face for a much-publicised charity gala, and Tony (knee-deep in it in Burma at the time) had to take the rap. He was pissed off and sore when he stormed into the downstairs quarters to give the damn thing a hiding, but his clone was already there waiting for him. Like he  _wanted_  Tony to give him hell.   
  
Tony lost his bluster half way through accusing him of being a reputation-ruining slut. "Don't let it happen again, okay?" he finished, lame even by his own standards, and turned to leave.  
  
"Don't—"  
  
"What?"  
  
His clone had taken a step forward, and then stopped abruptly. Tony stared at him. He stared back, with the same eyes. "Don't—go. I miss you."  
  
He walked forward again; one step, and another. Like he was learning for the first time. "Please." He reached Tony's side, and didn't touch him. He never had, much, being shy as he was in Tony's company, but this was the first time it felt like an absence rather than something he just didn't do. "Stay?"  
  
"Jesus. You wanted my attention that badly you could've just asked," Tony sighed.   
  
"I'm sorry," the clone said, and really sounded it.  
  


*

  
  
Tony had only ever screamed at his father once. He was fourteen, and his father had just returned from a month-long business trip to Europe. The first thing he did when his plane touched down was kiss his wife, shake Obadiah Stane's hand, and call in at the office. He walked off the tarmac with his phone at his ear.  
  
Tony was there, too.  
  
He shouted at his father to turn around, but Howard never heard him over the roar of the plane's engine.   
  


*

  
  
Tony stayed that night, and let his clone kiss his neck. He let him undo the top three buttons of his shirt, then batted his hands away and did the rest himself. He let his clone say, "I don't exist without you," and then let himself touch his bare chest, his waist, his thighs.   
  
They fucked, because Tony allowed it.   
  
Afterwards, Tony drank straight vodka and his clone said he hadn't known whose body was whose, in the middle of it. "We belong together," he said. "We can't be apart anymore." He told Tony he'd made a point of learning what Tony had never taught him, reading books Tony hadn't, watching films Tony had never had time to catch. "We're more complete, this way, you see?" He took Tony's hands in his own. They were the same – the same lines and shadows – but Tony's were scratched and burnt and damaged by life. The clone's were perfect.  
  
"Do you see?" it said.  
  


*

  
  
Tony assembled his team at that lab in Nevada, for the first time in months, and gave them back their hard work. The clone was sedated while they put it back in the tank, its white and unmarked hand tapping lightly against the glass as they let it go, suspended. Tony finally caught a glimpse of what Pepper and Rhodes might have seen all that time ago.   
  
"I reckon we should put this project on ice for a while, guys," he said wearily.   
  


*

  
  
"Nobody was hurt in the blaze, which I'm assured happened by accident during a routine experiment. Besides, I think by now we should all be used to minor explosions where Stark Industries is concerned," Rhodes told the press a few days later. A chuckle rippled round the room, though Rhodes didn't laugh. It reached Tony.  
  
He didn't either.


End file.
